MusicBee plugins

MusicBee Subsonic plugin

MusicBee is one of my favorite music managers/players on Windows, now that Winamp is dead. Since I also use Subsonic to host and stream my media collection from home, having a way to make both work together was an obvious target.

Subsonic is a server application that allows you to access your media files from any location with Internet access. You host your own files on your own hardware, having complete control over the service. No third-party accounts, no cloud services required. Also, it’s open source and free.

This plugin enables MusicBee to access your Subsonic installation and play back your music.

Internal optimizations for better handling of user settings.

v2.2

Improvements and bugfixes in this release:

Will now notify the user if a "ping" response from the Subsonic server is not successful, and allow the option to save the settings anyway, instead of silently reverting to the last saved ones. Fixes Issue #7

Installation

Extract the archive and copy the DLL file contained there in your MusicBee “plugins” folder (the default is “C:\Program Files (x86)\MusicBee\Plugins\”).

(Re)start MusicBee.

Go to MusicBee -> Edit -> Preferences -> Plugins to configure it to connect to your Subsonic server. You will need to provide a connection method (HTTP/HTTPS), server hostname or IP, port number, username and password.

Configuration

You will find the configuration section in MusicBee’s “Preferences” window -> Plugins. The minimum information you need to provide is “Hostname”, “Port”, “Username” and “Password”. You can optionally specify a “Path” as well, if your Subsonic server needs one. Otherwise the default “/” will be used. Both HTTP and HTTPS connections are supported. No password is ever sent to the server for security reasons, instead a salted (one-time) token is used to connect and request what is needed.

Please note that the first time MusicBee connects to your Subsonic Server, it will scan through your collection and create a local cache. This operation might take a while (depending on the size of your collection and the network speed) during which you won’t be able to see anything in the Subsonic node. Please be patient. 🙂